Projects

Reno Phil Gershwin Project

The George and Ira Gershwin Critical Edition is a project of the American Music Institute at the University of Michigan in partnership with the families of George and Ira Gershwin and is part of the U-M Gershwin Initiative. Laura Jackson is a member of the Advisory Board of the Gershwin Critical Edition along with such musicians as Michael Feinstein, Michael Tilson Thomas, and Jessye Norman. Laura also contributed substantively to the Rhapsody in Blue and An American in Paris editions.

The edition was announced in fall 2013 and led to the donation of George Gershwins’ 1933 Steinway piano to the University in 2014. The goal of the new critical edition is to create new scores of all the music of George and Ira Gershwin, giving these masterpieces of American music the depth and quality of a complete scholarly edition. Remarkably the Gershwin’s music has never been edited by musicologists and the scores of such iconic works as Rhapsody in Blue, An American in Paris, Concerto in F, and the folk opera Porgy and Bess contain errors and inconsistencies that have never been corrected. In many cases, the new editions of The George and Ira Gershwin Critical Edition will create the first-ever performance materials to accurately reflect the musical vision of the Gershwin brothers.